I got the new replacement tips for my stylus today, so I figured I’d have another go at digital drawing.
I hate it.
There’s a great thick-thin some people can produce (see my previous post on this), and lots of examples of masterful painting techniques that are possible on digital devices, but I just can’t do it. It feels like trying to draw with a vibrating tube of lipstick.
So here’s an example: I decided to draw a dog to demonstrate. Here it is sketched out in non-photo blue pencil (which shows up in pictures and scans, but I’ve still taken to it as a way to pre-visualise shapes).
Then I inked it in with a fine Platinum Carbon Desk Pen filled with waterproof Carbon ink (loving both of these).
Oops: I used regular writing paper, so the results from here on out are bleedy — not the ideal to show the power of paper, but I can’t be arsed drawing it all over again. And when I draw something the first time, I often capture a certain spirit or feeling about it that I can’t simply reproduce. So this is this dog; another would be another dog.
I then went over the outside lines with my regular pen (a Kaweco with its nib swapped out for a Tombow Extra-Fine nib, also filled with Carbon ink).
Now, the real pros will ink with a dip-pen fitted with a G nib. I used to draw my “good” drawings with a dip pen when I was little, but the ink running out meant I could never get a consistent line. Still, the G is a very flexible nib which allows for that thick and thin variation that I try to fake by going over the outside line with a thicker nib. It’s not ideal and sometimes messy, so I’m working on that.
Then I erase the pencil (or not, if it’s in my sketchbook). I didn’t wait long enough, so the dog got a bit smudged. (Again, bad paper, combined with impatience, as I was just doing this for an exercise.)
Finally, I paint it with water-brushes. With this cheap cartridge paper, that’s where it all really goes to hell.
Still, as mushy and uneven as this is, trying to do this on the tablet was worse.
I blued in a rough on one layer…
…Then went over the lines on another layer. To get that line variation, I have to vary the pressure and speed of the stroke, which makes the lines haphazard. Even going slowly, though, the lines have a wibbly wiggliness to them. What I intend is not what shows up.
Then the “watercolour” paint:
Ugh! It’s baby poo.
Yesterday I drew this fella, who I imagined was the Ambassador for the Free State of the Subconscious. This is exactly what I had in mind, and that’s exactly who showed up through my hand:
So, yeah, I’m giving up on digital drawing — yet again. Perhaps I could buy a Wacom Cintiq for £2,000 and sit connected to a desktop, but I’d rather stick to my pens and paper for now.
Technology should serve us, not the other way around.